Gregoire leads Rossi, Obama leads McCain in new Washington poll

A new Rassmussen poll of the Washington state gubernatorial race shows Gov. Christine Gregoire (D) leading challenger Dino Rossi (“G.O.P. Party”) 50% to 46%, with 5% “undecided”. The poll had 500 respondents and was taken on August 6th. The margin of error is 4.5%

This race is a rematch of the 2004 closest gubernatorial race in history that Gregoire won by 133 votes after a count, a mandatory recount, one recount requested by the Democrats, and a failed Republican lawsuit challenging the election. (Rossi ran as a Republican in 2004. This year he is running under the “G.O.P. Party” label.)

The close 2004 election led to extraordinarily early polling for the 2008 race. In the first 15 polls conducted from August 2005 until November 2006, Rossi led Gregoire, and always with over 50%. But with this current Rasmussen poll, Rossi has not held the lead for 16 consecutive polls—going back to February 2008:

Also, Gregoire has now polled at 50% or better in the raw percentages for the last two polls (the graph shows the normalized percentages).

My usual analysis, a simulation of a million elections of 500 people each, shows Gregoire winning 735,981 times and Rossi winning 253,856 times. This suggests that, if an election were held today, Gregoire would have a 74.4% chance of winning and Rossi would have a 25.6% change.

The simulation yields a distribution of votes that looks like this:

Rasmussen also polled for the Obama–McCain race in Washington state. Obama leads McCain 54% to 42%. Obama’s +12% advantage matches the +12% in the previous poll, an Elway poll from late July, and the +11% of a Strategic Vision poll taken just before that. In fact, this race has largely stabilized in Obama’s favor after a weak spell in March:

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It’s hard to believe that Republicans GOP’ers would want to defeat Gov. Gregoire who has taken this state from the 5th most business friendly state in the union to the 3rd most BUSINESS FRIENDLY state in the union.

Why these numb skulls continue to vote against their own best interest baffles anyone with an IQ above 75.

When will conservatives top acting like spoiled brats and start putting the best interests of America first.

In the national polls Barak’s 6% point lead translates into an electoral landslide in the fall. If history is any indication. Just look at the ’96 election, Clinton vs. Dole and the ’84 election of Reagan vs. Mondale. Both candidates won by just 6 or more % points and each won in a major landslide.

More important than the percentage rate – by all accounts, President Obama would win the election by an amazing 55 electoral votes if the election were held today. In today’s tough environment-that is indeed a landslide. Shows just how far the right wing shit-eaters have fallen!

@7 The Acorn cheaters were in it for a quick easy buck, were outed with the help of Acorn and never voted and, in fact, never became registered voters.

Washington has a Republican Secretary of State, a Republican Attorney General and a Republican US attorney; none of them found anything to investigate. The Republican Party filed a Lawsuit in a county that leans strongly to the right, got a Republican judge to hear their case and after hearing every single argument the Republicans had to make that judge dismissed every single one of those arguments. You’re beloved Republican Party then chose to not file an appeal of that ruling.

Richard Cherwitz, a University of Texas dean and expert in political communication, says “the deck is so stacked against the Republicans, I don’t see how [Obama] will not get elected.”

Watch, once McCain is elected the libs will cry foul like they alway do and claim the elections was stolen because of BS like this. Of course you have to if you are a perpetual loser like the dems to save face. Can’t blame them.

Are you talking about the original ballots that were counted in the first count or the mystery ballots that showed up in the second recount? Just curious??

It really doesn’t matter. McKenna’s (R) office looked into it and found nothing amiss, Reed’s office (R) looked into it and found nothing amiss, McKay’s office (R) looked into it and found nothing amiss. A Republican judge let the Republican party make every single argument they could make and found that every single argument was completely without merit. The Republican Party could have appealed the ruling and gone before more judges, but they chose not too.

Watch, once McCain is elected the libs will cry foul like they alway do and claim the elections was stolen because of BS like this. Of course you have to if you are a perpetual loser like the dems to save face. Can’t blame them.

Not that the dog knows shit about anything other than licking its own balls…

But assuming the trash talk spewed by the dog here were correct – then OOPS! Guess what bitch (you are a female dog aren’t you?) You have right wing Bobby Barr to take the role of Perot in this election and you looooooose AGAIN!

“Exit polling indicated that Perot voters would have split their votes fairly evenly between Clinton and Bush had Perot not been in the race, and an analysis by FairVote – Center for Voting and Democracy suggested that, while Bush could have won more electoral votes with Perot out of the race, he would not have gained enough to reverse Clinton’s victory. Clinton also led Bush in all polls after the Democratic Convention after Ross Perot’s initial exit in two-way races, and never lost the lead for the rest of the campaign.”

@16 A machine count does not count all of the ballots. That’s why the law provides for a hand recount in close races. Dino Rossi voted for that law. But I don’t expect you to know this, because you’re just a stupid dog. That’s why I’m explaining it.

@17 As a stupid dog, you lack the intelligence to understand that in the final recount every King County ballot was hand-counted from 3 to 8 times.

Here’s how the hand recount worked. The political parties submitted lists of party loyalists to King County Elections. The ballot counters were hired from these lists. During the recount, they were temporary county employees, and were paid $12.50 an hour.

All the King County ballots were sorted by precinct. All the ballots for each precinct were sealed in a ballot box.

There were 80 counting teams. Each counting team consisted of 1 Democratic counter, 1 Republican counter, and a full-time county elections employee who acted as the “recorder.” These employees are non-partisan civil servants over whom the parties have no control.

Each precinct ballot box was given to a counting team. The two counters — 1 Democrat, 1 Republican — sorted them into 2 piles, a pile of Gregoire votes and a pile of Rossi votes. Then they each counted every ballot and wrote the tally on a piece of paper which they handed to the recorder. The Democratic counter was not allowed to see the Republican counter’s tally sheet, and vice versa. The recorder looked at the tally sheets, and if the numbers didn’t agree exactly, the counters had to count all the ballots again. If their numbers still didn’t agree, the ballots for that precinct were taken away from them and given to a different counting team.

These process was repeated for each precinct at least 3 times, and some of the precincts were counted 6 or more times. The tallies of each count had to agree.

Most of the other 38 counties completed the hand recount in 1 or 2 days. King County’s hand recount took 2 weeks because King County is by far the largest county. It had 2 1/2 times as many ballots as the next largest county. King County had to count nearly a million ballots. Because of this, the other 38 counties had already reported their totals when King County finished.

At the end of King County’s hand recount, Gregoire led Rossi by 8 votes statewide. There were still several hundred ballots to be considered by the King County Canvassing Board, the body with the legal power and responsibility to resolve disputed ballots.

The King County Canvassing Board consisted of a county council member from the majority party on the county council, the county elections director, and the prosecuting attorney or his designee. Prosecutor Norm Maleng designated Dan Satterberg to sit for him on the Canvassing Board. Satterberg is a Republican. The elections director was a non-partisan civil servant. The county council member was Larry Phillips, a Democrat. (The Democrats had a 5-4 majority on the council.) Thus, the King County Canvassing Board consisted of 1 Democrat, 1 Republican, and 1 nonpartisan county employee — exactly the same composition as the counting teams.

The Canvassing Board unanimously agreed on the disposition of the vast majority of several hundred disputed ballots. Most of these ballots were sent to the Canvassing Board because of minor blemishes such as stray pencil marks or stains, and it was obvious who the voter had voted for. Only a handful of ballots resulted in a split vote by the Canvassing Board members.

Gregoire and Rossi both gained additional votes from the ballots sent to the Canvassing Board. King County is a Democratic county, and Gregoire won King County by 57% to 40%, so it’s not at all surprising that Gregoire gained more votes from the Canvassing Board ballots than Rossi did. These ballots increased Gregoire’s margin by 121, to 129.

Rossi and his party contested the election in court. Their handpicked Republican judge in their forum-shopped conservative eastern Washington county found that 4 of Rossi’s votes were fraudulent, and subtracted these fraudulent votes from the totals. This increased Gregoire’s lead to 133, the final certified result.

Throughout this process, all of the ballots were kept in sealed boxes, locked in steel cages, and guarded around the clock by King County armed sheriff’s deputies. If there was any ballot tampering, which there wasn’t, it would have been done with the connivance of these deputies. Everyone knows most cops are Republicans.

As an organism with the intellectual capacity of a mushroom can see, there is no way the King County recount was rigged. Among all living creatures, only dogs are stupid enough to think otherwise. Dogs are dumber than rotting leaves.

@18 Of course the last 2 presidential elections were stolen, but it’s pointless to discuss the overwhelming evidence of that fact with a stupid dog, so I won’t bother.

Instead, I’ll merely take this opportunity to remind readers of this blog that Republicans blocked the votes soldiers in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan — the unpatriotic fucks. The Republicans who blocked the military votes, I mean.

“The Republican National Committee has a special offer for African-American soldiers: Go to Baghdad, lose your vote.

“A confidential campaign directed by GOP party chiefs in October 2004 sought to challenge the ballots of tens of thousands of voters in the last presidential election, virtually all of them cast by residents of Black-majority precincts.

“Files from the secret vote-blocking campaign were obtained by BBC Television Newsnight, London. They were attached to emails accidentally sent by Republican operatives to a non-party website.

“One group of voters wrongly identified by the Republicans as registering to vote from false addresses: servicemen and women sent overseas.

“Here’s how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, ‘Do not forward’, to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as ‘undeliverable.’ The lists of soldiers of ‘undeliverable’ letters were transmitted from state headquarters … to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters’ registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballots being counted.

“A soldier returning home in time to vote in November 2004 could also be challenged on the basis of the returned envelope. Soldiers challenged would be required to vote by ‘provisional’ ballot. Over one million provisional ballots cast in the 2004 race were never counted; over half a million absentee ballots were also rejected. The extraordinary rise in the number of rejected ballots was the result of the widespread multi-state voter challenge campaign by the Republican Party. …

“The BBC obtained several dozen confidential emails sent by the Republican’s national Research Director and Deputy Communications chief, Tim Griffin to GOP Florida campaign chairman Brett Doster and other party leaders. Attached were spreadsheets marked, ‘Caging.xls.’ Each of these contained several hundred to a few thousand voters and their addresses. A check of the demographics of the addresses on the ‘caging lists,’ as the GOP leaders called them indicated that most were in African-American majority zip codes.

“Ion Sanco, the non-partisan elections supervisor of Leon County (Tallahassee) when shown the lists by this reporter said: ‘The only thing I can think of – African American voters listed like this – these might be individuals that will be challenged if they attempted to vote on Election Day.’ …

“The Republican National Committee in Washington refused our several requests to respond to the BBC discovery. … The party has refused to say why it would mark soldiers as having ‘bad addresses’ subject to challenge when they had been assigned abroad. … Setting up such a challenge list would be a crime under federal law. … While the party insisted the lists were not created for the purpose to challenge Black voters, the GOP ultimately offered no other explanation for the mailings. …

“Soldiers sending in their ballot from abroad would not know their vote was lost because of a challenge.”

Bullshit. Nothing but spaghetti the cook threw at the wall to see if any would stick. None did.

Rossi and his party spent $2 million on the finest lawyers money can buy, forum shopped for a Republican judge in a conservative county, and the only thing they proved is that 4 of Rossi’s votes were fraudulent. That’s all you need to know.

Most of the other 38 counties completed the hand recount in 1 or 2 days. King County’s hand recount took 2 weeks because King County is by far the largest county. It had 2 1/2 times as many ballots as the next largest county.

Well not quite. King county is the most corrupt. You have more poeple to help count the vote but asking dems to be fair is like asking Richard Simmons to be a body builder. Nice try though.

You call those pathetic arguements kicking ass heheheehhe. Using secret BBC crap to prove a point shows you are a fool. Next thing you know you will be typing up fake documents on word processors from the early 1970s… wait I don’t want to give them any ideas. They haven’t figured that one out yet. hehehehehehe

If Rossis’ lawyer would have hired a mathematician, they could have pointed out that the recount and retally would have been impossible for every single item to be in Gregoires favor. Of course when you “find” extra ballots marked Gregoire “ELEVEN” times and the most “amazing” voter turnout in Martin Luther King County. Hell, Logan is up to his old bullshit down in LA from what I hear.

Just a reminder to those who aren’t as stupid as the right wing turds posting here….

A republican judge in a republican county, taking evidence from republican witnesses represented by republican lawyers in an election with a republican Secretary of State found that the ONLY illegal votes cast in the last election for Governor were cast by…….

REPUBLICANS!

Call 1-800-WAAAAAAAAAH you sore looooooosers and PLEASE make this the main thrust of proven liar Dino Rossi’s campaign. Use the “I was robbed” approach. PLEASE do that you stupid inbred, ass-licking traitors. Please!

Michael@23, I didn’t realize you’re as dumb as Steve. Now I know better.

Wikipedia even states Perot ran as the Reformed Party Candidate.

“In 1995, he founded the Reform Party and won their nomination for the 1996 election. His running mate was Pat Choate. Because of the ballot access laws he had to run as an Independent on many state ballots. Perot received just eight percent of the popular vote in 1996”

Saturday, August 09, 2008 The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that the race for the White House is tied—Barack Obama and John McCain each attract 44% of the vote. When “leaners” are included, it’s McCain 47% and Obama 46%. With leaners, the candidates have been within one point of each other for nine straight days

I suppose most folks that post here know that Barack’s mother, Ann Dunham, went to high school on Mercer Island.

Although born in Kansas and raised there as a child, a teenaged Ann Dunham accompanied her parents in the 1950s when they moved to Seattle. Her father, Stanley Dunham, got a job as a furniture salesman. The Dunhams settled in Mercer Island and Ann graduated from M.I. High School.

They moved to Honolulu shortly after she graduated, setting the stage for her to go the U. of Hawaii and meet Barack Obama Sr.

I wonder if anyone has looked into her father’s time working at the furniture store at First and Pike.

I wish I had looked into it when I lived in Seattle (I left 7 years ago), but I knew nothing about Obama then.

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